Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said that he foresees “substantial progress” in trade talks within a year.
“The new president of Mexico (Andres Manul Lopez Obrador) has changed his rhetoric quite considerably,” Ross said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Lopez Obrador “likes the idea of redoing NAFTA…he’s got a very good team overlapping with the former president to conduct the negotiations,” Ross said.
The commerce secretary has been a proponent of tariffs, saying that the idea of a trade war is not new and that “we’ve been in a trade war since the end of World War II … what’s different is now our troops are coming to the ramparts."
Ross is also looking into companies possibly taking illegitimate advantage of the tariffs. On June 20, Ross said that his agency is probing recent steel price increases to determine whether some companies are “illegitimately profiteering” from U.S. tariffs on steel.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.